Purley railway station is in the London Borough of Croydon on the Brighton Main Line, 13 miles 29 chains (21.50 km) measured from London Bridge (15 miles 13 chains (24.40 km) from Charing Cross),[3] in Travelcard Zone 6.

Due to low passenger traffic, this was closed on 1 October 1847 by the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway (LB&SCR), which had opened the new Stoat's Nest station 1 mile (1.6 km) away at Coulsdon.

In 1855 a proposal by a local company to connect the sandstone quarries at Caterham to the main line railway became embroiled in a long-running dispute between the LB&SCR and the rival South Eastern Railway (SER), which resulted in the reopening of the station as Caterham Junction.

It would have to join the railway system on a section of the LB&SCR, where the SER had running powers but no stations.

The new railway had to sue the LB&SCR to force it to allow the junction with its line and to reopen the station.

On 22 September 1873, John Cunliffe Pickersgill-Cunliffe, a former member of Parliament, was struck by a train at the then Caterham Junction station.

A rail attendant, Philip Cable, helped put out the fire, and suffered an asthma attack and collapsed.